Environmental Markets & Commodity Reports

The European Union’s Emissions Trading System has been widely criticised for failing to provide sufficient incentive to stop the region’s generators burning coal rather than gas or other cleaner fuels. However, from next Wednesday, the EU ETS is set to change radically, according to research company Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

China’s solar developers installed a record 12GW of photovoltaic projects in 2013, and a booming market at the very end of the year may even have pushed installations up to 14GW. No country has ever added more than 8GW of solar power in a single year prior to 2013, and China’s record outstripped even the most optimistic forecasts of 12 months ago.

The European Commission has presented a package of proposals designed to set the long-term framework for the EU’s climate and energy policy and boost carbon prices. The package includes a proposal for binding targets of a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and a share of at least 27% of renewables in energy consumption by 2030. In addition, the Commission has put forward a legal proposal for a new market stability reserve to deal with the huge oversupply of allowances in the EU carbon market and ensure more stable carbon prices in the future.

The value of the global carbon market will reach EUR 46bn in 2014, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts. This will be up 15% from last year but leave it well below the historical high of EUR 98bn in 2011.

Rabobank Report: EU energy producers are looking for new ways to keep the growth in bioenergy production affordable. The increasing competition for solid biomass, such as wood pellets, will create space for relatively novel biomass sources to enter the market, among which agricultural residues like straw and stover have the greatest potential.

2014 will be an intense year for the politics of climate change. The formal processes of the UNFCCC will mosey on to plot the structure and lay out the policy options for the 2015 agreement. But it is the informal processes which have the most potential to shape the national interest debates in many critical countries.

The European Parliament cleared the final hurdle of backloading 900 million allowances from the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) by adopting the legally-clarifying amendment to the ETS Directive by a large majority, according to Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, the leading provider of market intelligence, news, analysis, forecasting and advisory services for the energy and environmental markets.

The 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC closed on Saturday, 23 November, in Warsaw, Poland, having achieved modest success but having missed an opportunity to make real progress on the 2015 roadmap, according to Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, the leading provider of market intelligence, news, analysis, forecasting and advisory services for the energy and environmental markets.

Frost & Sullivan released today its three big predictions for the global energy and environment market. Based on a ‘2013 Search for Growth’ survey which involved 1835 executives in more than 40 countries globally, Frost & Sullivan's insight highlights new areas of growth. Urbanisation and smart cities, the changing dynamics of unconventional gas, and opportunities generated from increased environmental awareness and legislation will be the key topics in 2014 and beyond.

Electricity utilities see having a credible price level for CO2 and long-term, predictable policies as the crucial factors for driving change in their fuel and technology mix, according to the latest insights from the Global Electricity Initiative (GEI), presented today.

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